Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Revelations

I had a rather illuminating discussion in my engineering class today. Okay, maybe illuminating is the wrong word. Interesting and thought provoking work. It was really my first non-hostile conversation with a publicschooler about the Bible and Christianity. To provide a little background, N. and R. are guys in my IED class who sit to my right. They're fun to talk with. N dabbles in writing science fiction, both of them are smart but not brilliant and both of them wrestle.

So N was talking about how a friend of his and he didn't think the crucifixion could happen because the nails wouldn't hold the weight of Jesus's body up. I felt like laughing. We jump in on each others conversations all the time, so it wasn't that strange when I told them that the nails pierced Jesus through his wrist, where the connection was stronger. I also pointed out that the Romans used crucifixion all the time.

I then brought up the passage in which Thomas sees the arisen Jesus and pointed a few things out from that passage. N asked if I was a Christian and I said yes. He nodded and said that the only thing he really liked about the Bible was Revelations. He said it was the only book he ever connected with and whatnot. We talked about Revelations and Philippians, because it's doubtless the book I'm the most familiar with. And Numbers. And Deuteronomy. He was well read, if anything.

Just not in the Gospels. It was strange, how he could be so familiar with Revelations and the books of law without the gospels. Part of it irked me. Part of it made me think. I'm still thinking. Anyway, seeing as every other time my faith has been brought up in school, they either look at me funny and stop talking to me or refrain from looking at me at all and act entirely too neutral and overly-normal and everything, I think this was an improvement.